The Believer Page 6

  I keep clicking, searching for Swedes in Syria on YouTube and Facebook. I can’t believe I never have before. There are stories, you hear about it in Bergort, legends, brothers who went down there. Nobody knows how, they just packed up and left late one night. Just a message a few weeks later to their family about Allah and making sacrifices. But it’s always seemed daunting, and has always been brothers on the outskirts, brothers you don’t know, who kept to themselves and then—boom—they’re gone, just tall tales and ghost stories, not real.

  But now I look around the room, heart still racing. It’s as if something is stuck in my head, something that pushes and squeezes itself into the solitude that has been there for months, for years, since you disappeared, since I forced you to go away, since I ratted out the brothers and became an outcast.

  I look at your bed, which is still there just a few yards away, still made, as if it’s waiting for you, as if you might come back at any time. But I know now. I know you’re never coming back. I stare at the gray wallpaper with white squares where posters of Messi used to hang, team pictures of Barcelona, the Pirate Tapes logo. All things that have been torn down now, all things that I tore down, tore into tiny pieces. Because I have never ever been able to leave anything whole.

  There’s a TV in here and a PlayStation console, video games and socks and underpants covering the floor. Gray light, a sun that keeps sinking, yellow light from streetlamps outside, concrete and gray. There’s nothing here.

  It’s as if I see my own life through that jihadist’s eyes. See how poor and empty my life is, how utterly useless. Just waking up and going to sleep. Just the same thing over and over again, the same emptiness.

  Everything is nothing, nothing, nothing.

  And it fills me up now more than ever. An emptiness that allows me no space, no room, which encloses me from the inside and out. I sink into it like a diving bell, black and heavy and completely alone. It’s as if my brain embraces the full extent of something no one should be allowed to understand: nothing matters.

  I curl up on my bed and feel my chest heaving faster, feel the flash of eyes, feel the oxygen running out, feel like I’m dying now, I might die now.

  It has to end, this pressure on my chest and temples.

  And suddenly I see those eyes from the YouTube video in front of me. See that they’re not indifferent, not alone and hopeless, but strong and warm and full of a clear sense of meaning and direction.

  I curl up like a newborn on the bed, my head filled with images of black-clad brothers in a row, kneeling in the dirt, backs bent. They fall simultaneously forward in prayer. Without my noticing it, I feel my lips start to move, first slowly and hesitantly. But then faster and louder as I close my eyes and let the words rush through me.

  The more words I get out of me, the more air I get in. The louder I mumble, the less pressure on my chest. I fall out of bed, get down on my knees, hands over my ears, lips mumbling words I don’t recognize, words I didn’t know I had in me. Louder, louder.

  With each repetition the press of the clock is reduced. With every word the ocean’s pressure is reduced, changes shape, color, goes from black to gray to blue to light. I fall forward on that shitty floor, put my forehead against an old towel, let my arms fall forward, like the brothers in the dirt, feeling the emptiness give way, feeling a gap open in the emptiness through which light, or something like light, falls down over me, the faintest of rays of sunlight, the most fragile grace. And I hear my own voice in the silence:

  “Ashaddu an la ilaha illa-Ilah ashaddu wa anna Muhammadan rasulu-IIa.”

  10. MANHATTAN, NEW YORK—SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2015

  YASMINE TRIES TO gather the words to explain what they’re looking at. The light from the egg cartons has changed to a duller, deeper purple.

  Geneviève finally turns her eyes from the cat to Yasmine. Her expression is quizzical, those slanted, accentuated eyebrows raised halfway to her gray hair. Yasmine clears her throat.

  “This is a picture that was sent to me just a couple of days ago,” she says. “As you can see, it’s a cat hanging from a lamppost.”

  “Yes, that’s pretty self-explanatory,” Mark says and takes off his glasses, polishing them again against the back of his green-striped tie while turning toward Yasmine.

  His gaze is also questioning, but not necessarily curious.

  “Horrible of course, in every way. But I don’t really see what this has to do with anything. It’s Saturday, and I’d rather . . .” He makes a rolling gesture with his hand, apparently in order to explain he’d much rather be doing anything besides this.

  Yasmine drags her fingers across the trackpad, centering the picture on the noose around the cat’s neck, zooming in on the tiny patch that sits attached to it. She zooms until the image becomes grainy. But the image on the label is simple and clear, easy to see.

  “This symbol is attached to the cat’s collar,” she says.

  They lean in toward the screeen to see it better. Mark puts his glasses on again, squinting at the wall where the picture of a red, stylized fist is silhouetted against the background of a five-pointed star. Four identical rectangles represent the fingers of the hand, with a tight thumb lying across them. It’s a simple image, like something from a propaganda poster or an eight-bit video game. Almost childish in its simplicity, like an enlarged emoji. Meanwhile, the symbol is remarkably powerful. Self-explanatory in a way that makes you feel like you’ve seen it before but can’t place it, as if it’s already part of a canon of rebellious symbols, along with the anarchist’s A and Che Guevara stencils.

  The symbol on the cat’s collar is what Fadi is spraying onto the wall in the fourth picture, the only picture she won’t show them.

  When she’s sure they’ve got a good look she zooms out and changes the image. A high, rusty fence appears on the wall. Through the fence, concrete apartment buildings can be seen, which extend up and out of the picture. In front of the fence stands an electrical box covered with old graffiti and dirt. On top of the graffiti the same image appears—a fist sprayed in bright red. Mark turns from the picture to Yasmine.

  “Where is this?” he says.

  But Yasmine doesn’t have time to explain before Brett gently, almost imperceptibly, puts his hand on top of her arm.

  “We have reason to believe that this is in Sweden. In the suburbs of Stockholm. Exactly where we don’t know yet. You might want to show them the last picture too?”

  Yasmine glances at Brett, unsure why he wouldn’t want her to tell them that the place is an artificial grass field in Bergort, which the kids call Camp Nou. But still she’s grateful that he’s trying to help. She clicks the trackpad.

  The last picture shows another stencil sprayed on the side of an apartment building. The same symbol as in the previous images. Yasmine knows exactly where it is. Just around the corner from Pirate Square, near the newsstand.

  “This is also in Sweden, but in a different city. In a suburb of Malmö, in the south of the country,” Brett says.

  Yasmine turns her head way too fast. Why is he doing this? She’s about to protest, but he sends her a look that indicates that she should trust him.

  “And this is all you have?” Geneviève says. “Three pictures from at least two different places? A dead cat and a stencil?”

  Yasmine nods.

  “Yes,” she lies.

  The image of Fadi is not for them.

  Mark seems impatient, almost halfway out of his chair.

  “Seriously,” he says. “Not to be rude, but this is a waste of time. What are we supposed to do with this? It’s sad about the cat and all, but it feels a little bit like you just want us to pay for your trip home to Sweden, to be perfectly honest.”

  A throbbing foot. A throbbing temple. Tears that threaten to finally break through. Geneviève leans over the table toward Brett. Her eyes are small and shiny like Mary’s polished earrings. The light has changed again, pale blue and cold now.

  “Brett,” sh
e says. “I really don’t understand. This could be anything. Why should this interest us? It could just be some maladjusted children. Hardly something for us.”

  She seems about to rise. But Brett is still sitting quietly in his chair.

  “I thought this was your specialty,” he says. “Finding out what the kids are up to?”

  “Sure, sure,” Geneviève replies wearily, standing now, and looking straight at Brett with a reserved expression. “If it can be assumed that there’s a coherent symbolism or an activity that’s representative of a group or some tendency, but this . . .”

  She points distractedly toward the crooked, badly lit photo on the wall.

  “This is nothing. Just graffiti. And some disturbed sociopath kid who kills cats.”

  She turns toward Yasmine.

  “The symbol is very nice. If it’s not generic we could surely sell it to another agency who’d use it for something. But we work more broadly than that. We want to see big shifts, not just individual expressions. Not your fault, darling, but I really thought Brett had better judgment.”

  Yasmine turns to Brett. Why isn’t he standing? Why doesn’t he put an end to this torture?

  Instead he bends down and takes out his computer from his calfskin briefcase. It’s shiny and impossibly small. Without asking for permission, he takes the cord from Yasmine’s computer and connects it to his computer. A dark green wave appears on the wall. Apparently his desktop image.

  “Is this really necessary?” Mark says, already reaching for the door of the meeting cube, which is camouflaged by the velvety egg cartons and impossible to discern if you’ve forgotten where you entered.

  But Geneviève has stopped and gestures for him to come back.

  “Give them a moment,” she says and turns to Brett and Yasmine. “But believe me, a moment’s really all you have.”

  Yasmine turns toward Brett, but he does not meet her eyes, just clicks methodically through folders on his computer until he finds one called Protest. It contains four images. The first one shows some kind of demonstration—Yasmine sees placards and flags with words written in French.

  “Very well,” Brett says. “Let’s begin here.”

  He smiles confidently and leans back with his arms crossed over his soft navy blue blazer.

  “This is some antiglobalization thing in Paris a few weeks ago. Pretty large, but they have them all the time. Nothing to get too worked up about.”

  He sways forward on his seat, swipes his fingers over the trackpad, and zooms in on a placard far out to the left of the picture.

  “But perhaps you recognize this?” he says.

  Yasmine is surprised to see the same red symbol on the placard, the fist she sent to him, against the same backdrop of a five-pointed star. She turns toward Brett, who blinks calmly at her before closing the image and opening another.

  “This is Williamsburg,” he says. “Maybe half an hour from here?”

  The picture shows a dark alley surrounded by brick walls and concrete. At the far end of the alley on the dirty wall sits a red fist inside a star. The stencil is much larger than in the image from Bergort, maybe a yard by a yard. Brett zooms in. In the middle of the star a cat is hanging in a noose, almost identical to the one Yasmine showed.

  Yasmine turns from the picture to Geneviève and Mark. They’ve sat down again and are leaning forward, their expressions now predatory. Brett clicks on the third image.

  “This one I took myself the other day,” he says. “Here in Manhattan, at Bryant Park.”

  The picture is undeniably Bryant Park. And there is the fist again, sprayed on one of the walls that leads down to the subway.

  “You just took this?” Geneviève says.

  “Maybe three days ago,” he says. “I was surprised at first. But you know, once you’ve started to look for something you see it everywhere. Pattern recognition.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it too, now that I think about it. Sprayed somewhere near the PATH train in Jersey City,” Mary says suddenly and leans back in her chair, thoughtful. “Not the cat. But the stencil. I’m pretty sure.”

  Geneviève turns to Mark; her impatience seems to have shifted focus.

  “And you don’t recognize this?” she says. “No scout reports? Nothing?”

  Mark shakes his head, even he’s thoughtful now.

  “Not that I can recall,” he says. “I’ll check again, but I’m pretty sure that this is the first we’ve heard of this.”

  “Sweden, Paris, several times here in New York?” Geneviève says. “Such a simple symbol? How is that possible?”

  She bends over the table, turning her tiger eyes toward Yasmine.

  “And someone sent images of this to you? Who?”

  “An old friend,” Yasmine lies. “Someone who knows I’m interested in street art.”

  “And you think you can figure out what this is about?” Geneviève says. “What the symbol means? Who’s behind it? Through your friend in Sweden?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I don’t think it will take more than a week to figure out what this is about, actually.”

  Geneviève nods and turns to Mary.

  “Book the next flight to Stockholm for Yasmine,” she says. “Put her in our usual hotel there for a week.”

  She spins her chair and looks coolly at Mark.

  “And you follow up in New York, right? We have some contacts too, don’t we? I mean, this is your job after all, isn’t it?”

  Mark shakes his head, suddenly confused.

  “So weird,” he mumbles. “We don’t miss this stuff.”

  A subdued knock on the door interrupts Mark’s introspection.

  “Ah!” Geneviève says and stands up. “Gretchen.”

  Gretchen turns out to be a blond, middle-aged doctor in jeans and a burgundy sweatshirt with NOTRE DAME printed in thick letters across the chest, who arrives with a bag that holds enough medical supplies to equip an ambulance. Gretchen isn’t at all interested in listening to Yasmine’s confused assurances that she’s fine, and simply applies a cooling salve around her eyes and cheeks and even manages to get her to reveal her injured foot.

  When Gretchen leaves twenty minutes later, Yasmine is patched up. It’s just Yasmine and Brett in the conference room now, and she feels like Malik, the beige toy dog she inherited from their Croatian neighbors when she was little, the dog that she never let out of her sight. Malik was carefully sewn together, had new button eyes and a tail that constantly fell off. Every time he split, more of his stuffing fell out until he was only plush and thread. She feels like that now, not leaking anymore, but made of only plush and wire and nothing more.

  Brett conjures up a glass and places it in front of her, fills it halfway with mineral water.

  “Feeling better now?” he asks.

  Yasmine ignores the water.

  “What the hell just happened?” she says.

  “We’ll talk on the way to the airport.” Brett gives her a satisfied smile.

  And now she sits slumped in the leather seat of Brett’s monster of a car as they drive through Queens on Atlantic Avenue toward JFK. She can feel the credit card that Mary from Shrewd & Daughter gave her rubbing against her hip bone through the thick fabric of her English skirt. It’s her winning ticket, and she can hardly believe it. She’s on her way. Everything that happened is fading, David’s bullshit, all the breakups and deceit. None of it matters. Fadi may be alive, and she’s going to find him. The credit card is proof that she has the ability to do so.

  “Use it responsibly and keep receipts,” Mary had said, winked, then lowered her voice. “But don’t be too careful.”

  Her foot feels soft and muffled, not even her temple hurts anymore. She probably has one of Gretchen’s pink pills to thank for that.

  “Ozone Park,” Brett says and drums his fingers on the light brown leather of the steering wheel. “I’ve always loved that name.”

  Yasmine looks out the window at the dusty nail salons, at the pl
astic bags drifting across the vacant lots, plywood on the windows of abandoned houses, liquor stores. It seems far from Brett’s world and closer to her own.

  “What the hell just happened up there?” she says and turns from the exhaust and boarded-up dollar stores toward leather and wood paneling—and Brett.

  “What happened at the meeting?” he asks.

  “What else?”

  He laughs, drumming the steering wheel again.

  “Oh,” he says. “Just a little bit of Brett magic, that’s all.”

  “Where did you get a hold of those photos? Did you know about this before? I only sent you my photos twenty-four hours ago.”

  He glances at her sideways, a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “Twenty-four hours is all I need, baby. More than I need, actually. ”

  They stop at a red light, and he turns to her.

  “You think the photos were real?” he says.

  Yasmine shakes her head, trying to make this afternoon, these last few days, all of it fall into place.

  “I don’t understand anything,” she says. “Anything at all.”

  He pushes quietly on the gas pedal, and they start moving slowly over the bumpy road again.

  “You sent me the pictures,” he says. “I knew right away it wouldn’t be enough. My God, Yasmine, I asked you to prepare properly?”

  He glances at her with a bit of irritation in his eyes.

  “Luckily I didn’t trust you to do that, and took the initiative to do it myself. Those people aren’t just any old losers. They sell trends. Their clients are paying them millions to stay abreast of whatever the kids are up to. So their clients stay in a good position to tailor their products and campaigns so it feels like they’ve created the trend themselves. But what do Shrewd & Daughter really sell? Nothing! Just smoke and mirrors. They’re hustlers. Albeit rich and successful hustlers. And you know what they say: if you’re gonna hustle a hustler, you gotta take it to the next level.”